Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Omen, Part 557

Also wanted to point out this totally insane piece in the sports section today, "For Yankees, Squirrel's Visit May Be Omen (A Bad One)":

But more significant, perhaps, was the pesky and distracting squirrel that scampered up and down the right-field foul pole during the game and that, according to Norse mythology, just might have foretold that the Yankees will not prevail over the Red Sox this season.

Believe it or not, the squirrel’s actions closely resembled those of Ratatosk, or “gnawing tooth,” a squirrel in Norse mythology that climbed up and down a tree that represented the world. Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic scholar and poet, recorded the story in his 13th-century work “Prose Edda.”

It goes on! The reporter talks to a Yale professor of Old Norse and Old English (who's also a Yankees fan)...and then:

Are the Red Sox destined to beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, as they did in 2004? Is that what the squirrel was trying to tell everybody? Who knows? Right Field Ratatosk was not available for interviews last evening.

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I have to stop posting for a while. (Can you tell that this week I started drinking coffee again?!) Next week, the Dizzies will be renamed "My thoughts on picking up the newspaper this morning."

2 Comments:

So when I was a little kid, my mom was studying for her oral examinations in grad school; as it happens, she is a scholar of Old Norse. Anyway, her strategy of self-pedagogy was, get this, to compose rhyming songs about Norse myth and about Icelandic history, which she would then sing while accompanying herself on the lute. The best one recounted the adventures of the self-same Mr. Sturluson: "Now Snorri went to Norway in twelve hundred and eighteen...." I recall this song as being rather beautiful, and in hindsight see the whole operation as crazy and heroic. — I know you know I am not making this up.